Unified Modeling Language Notation Research Articles

TOWARD A FORMALIZATION OF USE CASE DIAGRAM USING Z SPECIFICATIONS

The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is an evolutionary step in the development of Object-Oriented analysis and design (OOA&D) methods that appeared in the late '80s and early '90s. UML has become a widely adopted standard in the software development industry. Various attempts have been made to formally define the syntax and semantics of the UML notations, and to represent its models in a formal notation. The purpose of these attempts is to allow UML models to be rigorously checked, and to allow formal analysis of the modeled systems. Use Case Diagram is one of the diagrams supported by UML which describe the functional requirements of the system under development, helping to identify the complete set of user requirements. This paper aims to present a tentative approach to provide the Use Case Diagram with formal semantics using Z specification language.

XML-based Representation in a CBR System for Fixture Design

AbstractFixture design is a complex process and largely relies on a designer’s experience to solve current problem. Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) provides a promising methodology for solving design problems in this complex domain based on the idea that past problem-solving experiences can be reused and learned from in solving new problems. In order to realize a CBR design system to assist designers to solve fixture design problems in the Internet-enabled environment, case representation is described using XML (eXtensible Markup Language) format in this paper. The XML-based representation structure using UML (Unified Modeling Language) notation is illustrated and discussed. A design process with an example is presented in the developed system applied with XML-based representation. The Internet-enabled CBR system for fixture design is developed and implemented in client-server mode architecture.

On design and implementation of an object-relational spatial database for activity/travel behaviour research

The development of micro level models of urban processes has partially been facilitated by increased availability of detailed activity/travel survey data. Managing and exploring these data can be resource intensive and time consuming. Researchers and municipal planning organizations increasingly face information management challenges. This paper reviews an experiment in design and implementation of an object-relational geographic database using the principles of object-orientation. A data model is specified using the Unified Modeling Language notation and a visual modeling tool, and then implemented as an object-relational spatial database. The resulting database acts as an information foundation capable of supporting empirical research and application development. The experience suggests that a formal approach to information management can enhance our understanding of complex activity/travel data contributing to informed application of these data to transportation research questions.

Designing Quality Architecture: Incorporating ISO Standards into the Unified Process

Requirements change with the ebbs and flows of a business. Applications must be able to react to changes in the business model and, likewise, their technology platform (i.e., architecture) must be agile. Often, the operations and environment requirements of a system affect the application's ability to be modified quickly. This article presents a methodology that combines ISO standards and UML (Unified Modeling Language) standards. the ISO model is used to identify the quality characteristics for software architecture. These attributes form an evaluation framework. Each functional requirement is defined as a use case model using UML notation. This model is expanded with the specific quality properties required based on the ISO model. the resulting use cases are prioritized on the basis of their architectural impact. With these use cases, several candidate architectures can be identified. Alternatives are compared to the evaluation framework to select one architecture design. A real-time monitoring system is used as a case study to reinforce the methodology introduced in the article.

How You Could Use NEPTUNE in the Modelling Process.

The European Community plays an active role in giving concrete expression to the new developments taking place in modelling languages and in UML (Unified Modelling Language) [1] in particular. These developments often make use of norms and specifications that are mainly carried out by the OMG (Object Management Group). The main objective of the European NEPTUNE project led by CS (Nice Environment with a Process and Tools Using Norms and Example) is to develop both a method and tools (in addition to the existing software development tools) that support the use of the UML notation. This method has emerged from considerable experience gained in the industrial environment. It will apply to a variety of application fields, including software engineering, business process, and knowledge management [4]. The newly developed tools will enable UML models to be statically checked for their coherence and consistency. They will also enable professional documentation resulting from the transformation of models [5]. The method and tools developed make the application of the UML standard easier, and they promote its use in a large number of business fields so that the UML standard might be further improved with the aim to participate effectively in the work of the OMG. This paper will present the NEPTUNE method and tools. Then, lessons learned from this project will be reported, outlining the benefits and drawbacks of this technology as experienced by the development team. A conclusion will offer suggestions for future improvements and provide an overview of the next actions related to NEPTUNE deployment.

An Initial Experimental Assessment of the Dynamic Modelling in UML

The goal of this empirical study is to compare the semantic comprehension of three different notations for representing the dynamic behaviour in unified modelling language (UML): (a) sequence diagrams, (b) collaboration diagrams, and (c) state diagrams. Eighteen students of Informatics analysed the three types of diagrams within three different application domains. We performed a 3 × 3 factorial experimental design with repeated measures. The metrics collected were total time and total score. The main conclusion of this study is that the comprehension of the dynamic modelling in object-oriented designs depends on the diagram type and on the complexity of the document. The software project design written in the UML notation is more comprehensible, when the dynamic behaviour is modelled in a sequence diagram. While if it is implemented using a collaboration diagram, the design turns out to be less comprehensible as the application domain, and consequently, the document is more complex.

The application of UML and an open distributed process framework to information system design

The development of information systems to support design and manufacturing activities should follow a reference model in order to be compatible with major systems architectures. In contrast, computational methodologies and notations provide ways to design and build information systems but usually do not take reference models into consideration. This paper discusses how reference models and computational methodologies/notation can be used in harmony, and demonstrates this through an example of an information system design where Unified Modelling Language (UML) diagrams are applied to represent the Reference Model of Open Distributed Processing (RM-ODP) viewpoints. A selected set of UML diagrams has been applied in the Enterprise, Information and Computational RM-ODP viewpoint. The inherent object-oriented properties of the reported research further enable and facilitate the migration of essential elements from one RM-ODP viewpoint to another via the use of UML notation. This approach provides an important contribution by harmonising a range of views of an information system.

Integrating security design into the software development process for e‐commerce systems

Development of Web‐based e‐commerce systems has posed challenges in different dimensions of the software development process including design, maintenance and performance. Non‐functional requirements such as performance added to the system as an after thought would lead to extremely high cost and undesirable effects. Security, rarely regarded in the past as one of the non‐functional requirements, has to be integrated into the software development process due to its impact on e‐commerce systems. In this paper, a design methodology based on systems security engineering capability maturity model (SSE‐CMM) is proposed to specify design details for the three defined processes: risk, engineering and assurance. By means of an object‐oriented security design pattern, security design covering impact, threats, risks and countermeasures for different parts of an e‐commerce system can be examined systematically in the risk process. The proposed software development process for secured systems (SDPSS), representing the engineering process, consists of four steps: object and collaboration modeling, tier identification, component identification and deployment specification. Selected unified modeling language notations and diagrams are used to support the SDPSS. Using a simplified supply‐chain e‐commerce system as an example, integration of security design into the software development process is shown with discussions of possible security assurance activities that can be performed on a design.

Modeling Automatic Train Regulation Systems

The increasing complexity of automatic train supervision and regulation systems (ATSIATR) has placed more and more inlportance on the use of modeling to describe and understand system behaviour. Such a model should provide a description suitable for requirement review and approval by the rail operator as well as detailed views for use by designers, implementers and testers. The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a visual modeling standard that has been adopted by Alcatel to capture ATSJATR models. The choice of a standard notation was motivated by our need to exchange models with various stakeholders; the selection of UML in particular was influenced by its wide adoption in the software industry. We have gained our experience with using the Unified Modeling Language during the development of our latest generation product for train regulation and supervision. During this development we have defined an approach for requirements modeling and selected a useful subset of UML notations for analysis and design capture. UML has proven to be very effective at mapping from the requirements model to the analysis model to the design model and finally to implementation. We have found that this natural correspondence between models has simplified the task of reusing our code base on new projects and we believe it will be beneficial in the areas of maintenance and new feature incorporation.

An experimental comparison of reading techniques for defect detection in UML design documents

The basic motivation for software inspections is to detect and remove defects before they propagate to subsequent development phases where their detection and removal become more expensive. To maximize this potential, the examination of the artefact under inspection must be as thorough and detailed as possible. This implies the need for systematic reading techniques that tell inspection participants what to look for and, more importantly, how to scrutinize a software document. Recent research efforts have investigated the benefits of scenario-based reading techniques for defect detection in functional requirements and functional code documents. A major finding has been that these techniques help inspection teams find more defects than existing state-of-the-art approaches, such as, ad hoc or checklist-based reading (CBR). In this paper, we describe and experimentally compare one scenario-based reading technique, namely perspective-based reading (PBR), for defect detection in object-oriented design documents using the notation of the unified modeling language (UML) to the more traditional CBR approach. The comparison was performed in a controlled experiment with 18 practitioners as subjects. Our results indicate that PBR teams discovered, on average, 58% of the defects and had an average cost per defect ratio of 56 min per defect. In this way, PBR is more effective than CBR (i.e., it resulted in inspection teams detecting, on average, 41% more unique defects than CBR). Moreover, the cost of defect detection using PBR is significantly lower than CBR (i.e., PBR exhibits, on average, a 58% cost per defect improvement over CBR). This study therefore provides evidence demonstrating the efficacy of PBR scenarios for defect detection in UML design documents. In addition, it demonstrates that a PBR inspection is a promising approach for improving the quality of models developed using the UML notation.